1. Field
The invention relates generally to imaging and display systems and, more particularly, to monitors, and interactive displays, e.g., in retail and/or service environments, medical or home situations, video conferencing, gaming, etc. Specific implementations relate to making a flat panel display appear as a mirror. Another specific implementation relates to making a flat panel display provide a video of a person looking at his eyes to create an eye to eye video conference.
2. Related Art
Customers may shop for consumer articles, for example, apparel such as clothes, e.g., shirts, pants, coats and other garments, as well as shoes, glasses, and/or any other items or products, such as cosmetics, furniture and the like. Shopping normally takes place at a shopping facility, for example, retail stores. Prior to making a decision which article to buy, a customer may try on various articles (e.g., apparel, cosmetics) and/or pose with other background articles (e.g., furniture), and may view for each trial a user-appearance in front of a mirror, which may be located, for example, at a trial area of the retail store. For example, the customer may try on a first article, e.g., a suit, and view for that first trial his/her user-appearance in front of the mirror. Then, the customer may try on a second article, e.g., another suit. The customer may then need to memorize his/her user-appearance from the first trial in order to perform a mental comparison between the first article and the second article, thereby to evaluate which of the two articles might be a better fit for the customer.
Unfortunately, since the customer may try on numerous articles and/or since the second trial may take place a considerable amount of time after the first trial or even at a different store, the customer may not be able to recall his/her appearance for each trial and may therefore be required to repeatedly retry articles, e.g., items of apparels, previously tried on. This may result in a frustrating and inefficient shopping experience.
The conventional mirror (i.e., reflective surface) is the common and most reliable tool for an individual to explore actual self-appearance, in real time. A few alternatives have been proposed by prior art around the combination of a camera and a screen to replace the conventional mirror. However, these techniques are not convincing and are not yet accepted as a reliable image of the individual as if he was looking at himself in a conventional mirror. This is mainly because the image generated by a camera is very different from an image generated by a mirror.
When a user looks at himself in the mirror, what he actually sees is the reflection of himself as if he was standing at a distance that is double the distance from him to the mirror. This is illustrated in FIG. 5A, wherein the user standing at distance D1 sees himself at a distance equal to twice D1. Similarly, as shown in FIG. 5B, a user standing at distance D2 will see himself at a distance 2×D2. In addition, the angle of the user's Field of View (FOV) changes when the user changes the distance, e.g., gets closer, to the mirror. The FOV is limited by the specular reflecting angle (β) from the mirror to the user's eye and to the edge of the visible image on all sides of the mirror (four sides for a rectangular or square mirror). In FIG. 5B the bottom of the vertical FOV is illustrated as double the angle (β) formed by the lines connecting the user's eyes to the bottom of the mirror and reflecting to the user's shoes. Consequently, as illustrated in FIG. 5B, when the user approaches the mirror, the FOV angle increases, which is why he continues to see the same size reflection (FOV1<FOV2), so that the user actually sees himself roughly at the same size, but closer. This is a noticeable difference from a camera, wherein as the user gets closer to the camera, he appears larger in the image. This is mainly because the FOV of a camera is fixed and is determined mainly by the size of the camera lens, or focal length.
There are other phenomena to note regarding reflection of a mirror. For example, when the user approaches the mirror, the reflection of his eyes will always stay on the same virtual line into the mirror. Conversely, depending on a camera's height, as the user gets closer to the camera, the user's eyes may appear at different levels. Another difference from a camera is that when one looks at a mirror, one's image appears to be reversed (e.g., if one raises one's right hand, his left hand will appear to go up in the mirror). However, a mirror does not “swap” left and right any more than it swaps top and bottom. A mirror reverses the forward/backward axis (i.e., what's in front of the mirror appears to be behind the mirror), and we define left and right relative to front and back. Also, because the image in the mirror is virtual, the mirror can be smaller than the full body and the user will still see the reflection of his full body. The reason is that the specular reflection (in FIG. 5A the angle of incidence β equals to the reflection angle β) can increase the effective field of view while the user approaches the mirror. Moreover, although the mirror is a two dimensional object, the user sees his appearance in three dimensions.
For at least some of the reasons noted above, so far no system has been provided for imitating a mirror convincingly. Imitating a mirror can have many applications in retail and other fields, and opens the possibility of incorporating real life experiences with virtual life experiences, such as sharing on social networks and other mobile technologies.